248 Europe, and the British Parliament. 



sinecure, not amounting perhaps to the wages of his cook, as if he were 

 not worth a shilling in the world. But he has two or three votes in the 

 house, and the minister, to whom the first consideration is to secure those 

 votes, must give way. So runs the world. 



But how long is this insult to common sense to be borne ? We say 

 that a government which did its duty, would instantly extinguish the 

 whole sinecure list, and cut off from the pension list, every individual 

 whose services were not distinctly public. This would be acting hon- 

 estly, and as such, would be acting wisely even for the permanency of 

 the ministry itself. For there can be no truth more unquestionable than 

 this, that England will now be content with no half-way cabinet, no 

 meagre and shifting contrivance to keep every abuse that can by possi- 

 bility be kept, and to concede nothing but what is extorted by the pub- 

 lic indignation. The cabinet that will expect to survive the first session, 

 must adopt perfect honesty for its policy, and then its stand may be as 

 long as that of the empire. What the Whigs will do we can only con- 

 jecture. But, as yet, they have done nothing. Their contrivance 

 for dividing the Pension List is totally ineffectual for the object which the 

 nation demand, who care not a straw whether the pensions be paid 

 from one fund or another ; but demand that they shall be instantly 

 reduced. The Sinecures seem to have undergone no reduction what- 

 ever. Lord Ellenborough's 9,000 a year, in the King's Bench, is still 

 duly paid; Lord Melville's 3,000; Lord Rosslyn's 3,000; with an 

 endless multitude of others equally heavy, and equally unearned, go on 

 in the most flourishing style imaginable, and will go on, until the 

 cabinet learns, that its existence depends on their going on no longer. 

 If the fear of raising an opposition among the sinecurists be the bugbear 

 of the Cabinet, it is undone ; for every noble lord and patriotic com- 

 moner, who sees the remotest chance of his pittance being diminished 

 by a farthing through its continuance, hates the Cabinet like poison. 

 But the matter will ripen at last, and before long. The only Cabinet 

 that will be endured in England, will be one that will lay the axe to the 

 root of the tree, and without regarding the outcries of pampered indi- 

 viduals who have fattened on the miseries of the people, or feebly and 

 dishonourably dreading their combination, will sweep the land of the 

 locusts; and make England what it ought to be, a place where an 

 honest man can live by his industry. Let the Cabinet trust to the Nation ; 

 and it will not be disappointed. There it will find fidelity which cannot 

 be alienated, strength which cannot be shaken, and honesty which defies 

 corruption. 



The debate on the Civil List has disappointed the country. We 

 expected to find important reductions we find comparatively none. But 

 in place of those, which all men pronounce essential to the well-being 

 of the empire, we find a mere change in the manner of drawing up the 

 accounts. The sums payable for the king's actual expenditure are separ- 

 ated from those for the ambassadors, judges, &c., which once formed a 

 part of the list, and which, after all, none but the most ignorant person 

 could have ever confounded with the actual expence of the royal 

 family. The privy purse now amounts to 110,000.; the expence of 

 the household to 171,000. ; and the service of the household to 130,000. ; 

 or 400,000 in all. No one can object to see a King of England supplied 

 as a king should be, with the due means of royal living. But the item 

 of the " service of the household/' adding nothing to his comforts, and 



